Residents of the biennial Austronesian International Arts Award (南島國際美術獎) are showing freshly completed works inspired by Austronesian cultures or the landscape of Taitung County at the Taitung Art Museum (臺東美術館). In the first tier of this juried government-sponsored contest, artists were chosen for a fully-funded 30-day residency in Taitung County during which they completed a themed work. In the second tier, works were chosen for a NT$300,000 top prize and two awards of NT$100,000 each.
■ Taitung Art Museum, 350 Jhejiang Rd, Taitung County (台東縣台東市浙江路 350 號 ), tel: (08) 933-0252. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Opening reception tomorrow at 2pm. Until Aug. 31
Photo courtesy of Michael Ku Gallery
A Database of Living Bodies: The Production of Image Variations with Color Ink (活體資料庫：變異形象的墨彩製造) is an inventory of beasts delicately rendered in ink or gouache, a thick paint that builds up easily into layers and lends a sculptural feel. Eight contemporary Taiwanese artists created zoo animals with office-worker hindquarters, baby chicks with tentacles and other oddball assemblies of familiar animal parts.
■ Aki Gallery (也趣藝廊), 141 Minzu W Rd, Taipei City (台北市民族西路141號), tel: (02) 2599-1171. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from noon to 6:30pm
■ Until July 27
Photo courtesy of Aki Gallery
The Rural, the Scar, the Southwestern Soul: Works of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute (鄉土‧傷痕‧西南魂─四川美院作品展 ) is a group exhibition that surveys Scar Art (傷痕美術), a chapter of Chinese art history dealing with the Cultural Revolution. Beginning at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute (四川美院) in the 1970s, painters began to shift from idealistic portrayals of heroes to realist depictions of rural figures, minorities and memories of the Cultural Revolution.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號), tel: (02) 2361-0270. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. General admission: NT$30
■ Until Aug. 24
Landscape of Man (人的風景) is a two-part exhibition offering a look at modern China through art. One gallery is covered with scripts, clips, posters and sound samples that survey Lou Ye’s (婁燁) oeuvre, which is typical of post-1990s “sixth generation” cinema in treating people of modern urban China. Meanwhile, Chinese contemporary artists Song Kun (宋琨), Wei Jia (韋嘉) and Qi Zing (齊星) show paintings of lovers, friends and single human figures caught in private and unguarded moments.
■ Michael Ku Gallery (谷公館), 4F-2, 21, Dunhua S Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市敦化南路一段21號4樓之2), tel: (02) 2577-5601. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11am to 7pm
■ Until Aug. 17
There Has Been (此曾在) features two Taiwanese artists who each recreate a long-gone experience on film. Su Hu-hsien (蘇育賢) presents Chair (椅子), a gleeful 20-minute paean to a standard-issue wooden chair that in his childhood doubled as a time machine. Against a pale blue wall, Chu Yin-hua (朱盈樺) coordinates blown-up sepia-toned family photographs to reflect stories between moments and persons within them.
■ Fotoaura Institute of Photography (海馬迴光畫館), 2F, 83 Chenggong Rd, Greater Tainan (台南市成功路83號2樓), tel: (06) 222-3495. Open Wednesdays to Sundays from 1pm to 8pm, closed Mondays and Tuesdays
■ Until July 27
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) invaded Vietnam in 1979, following a year of increasingly tense relations between the two states. Beijing viewed Vietnam’s close relations with Soviet Russia as a threat. One of the pretexts it used was the alleged mistreatment of the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam. Tension between the ethnic Chinese and governments in Vietnam had been ongoing for decades. The French used to play off the Vietnamese against the Chinese as a divide-and-rule strategy. The Saigon government in 1956 compelled all Vietnam-born Chinese to adopt Vietnamese citizenship. It also banned them from 11 trades they had previously
Growing up in a rural, religious community in western Canada, Kyle McCarthy loved hockey, but once he came out at 19, he quit, convinced being openly gay and an active player was untenable. So the 32-year-old says he is “very surprised” by the runaway success of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian-made series about the romance between two closeted gay players in a sport that has historically made gay men feel unwelcome. Ben Baby, the 43-year-old commissioner of the Toronto Gay Hockey Association (TGHA), calls the success of the show — which has catapulted its young lead actors to stardom -- “shocking,” and says
Jan. 12 to Jan. 18 At the start of an Indigenous heritage tour of Beitou District (北投) in Taipei, I was handed a sheet of paper titled Ritual Song for the Various Peoples of Tamsui (淡水各社祭祀歌). The lyrics were in Chinese with no literal meaning, accompanied by romanized pronunciation that sounded closer to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) than any Indigenous language. The translation explained that the song offered food and drink to one’s ancestors and wished for a bountiful harvest and deer hunting season. The program moved through sites related to the Ketagalan, a collective term for the
Inside an ordinary-looking townhouse on a narrow road in central Kaohsiung, Tsai A-li (蔡阿李) raised her three children alone for 15 years. As far as the children knew, their father was away working in the US. They were kept in the dark for as long as possible by their mother, for the truth was perhaps too sad and unjust for their young minds to bear. The family home of White Terror victim Ko Chi-hua (柯旗化) is now open to the public. Admission is free and it is just a short walk from the Kaohsiung train station. Walk two blocks south along Jhongshan
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